Each year, the National Equipment Register (NER) and the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) track heavy equipment theft reports and compile a list of the most commonly stolen pieces of machinery as well as the states in which thefts are most likely to occur.

The report uses data from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the NICB, and NER to provide a comprehensive analysis of heavy-equipment theft during the year, with the goal of helping provide insurance companies and others with information that can be used to help allocate investigative resources and influence theft prevention efforts.

In 2010, the NCIC received 13,374 theft reports. In descending order, the five states with the most incidents of heavy-equipment theft were:

  • Texas
  • Florida
  • North Carolina
  • Georgia, and
  • South Carolina.

Together, those five states accounted for 43 percent of total equipment theft. Rounding out the top 10 were California, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Ohio. The top 10 states accounted for 61 percent of all thefts. Last year, just 19 percent of heavy equipment stolen was recovered.

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